There is no magic number of cameras that suits every business, but there is a sensible way to work it out. Most small premises land somewhere between 4 and 16 cameras, and the right figure depends on your entry points, blind spots and what you actually need to see. Here is how we approach it when surveying sites across Edinburgh, the Lothians and the North of England.
The most reliable method is to walk your premises and list every view that matters, then match one camera to each. A camera should have one clear job: identifying faces at a doorway, reading number plates at a gate, or giving a wide overview of a sales floor. Cameras asked to do two jobs at once usually do both badly, which is how businesses end up with footage that shows an incident happened but cannot identify anyone.
As a rule of thumb, a camera intended to identify a person needs them to fill a good portion of the frame, which in practice means covering a choke point no more than 4 to 5 metres wide with a standard lens. Overview cameras can cover far more, perhaps a 10 to 15 metre stretch of open floor, but only well enough to track movement, not to identify strangers.
These are the ranges we most often end up installing after a proper survey. Your site may differ, but they are a realistic starting point for budgeting.
A small retail unit or cafe typically needs 4 to 6 cameras: front door, till, shop floor overview, rear door and stock area. A standalone office of 10 to 30 staff usually sits at 5 to 8, covering entrances, reception, the server room and the car park. A small warehouse or industrial unit tends to need 8 to 16 because of loading bays, racking aisles, yard space and perimeter fencing. Multi-tenant or multi-floor buildings scale up from there, and at that point the recorder and network design matter as much as the camera count.
It is tempting to think more cameras equals more security, but each extra camera adds cost, storage demand and network load, and footage nobody can review is not much of a deterrent. A 4K camera recording continuously can generate 40 to 60 GB per day, so a 16 camera system needs serious storage planning, whereas a well-placed 8 camera system with motion-triggered recording often covers the same risks for less.
Placement quality matters more than quantity. A camera facing a bright window will silhouette everyone who walks in, and one mounted too high will show the tops of heads rather than faces. In Scotland and Northern England you also need to think about low winter sun, long hours of darkness and rain on external housings, which is why we favour cameras with good low-light performance and infrared range of at least 30 metres for external positions.
Modern IP cameras run over your data network, usually powered by PoE switches, so the number of cameras your building can support is partly a cabling question. Older premises, and Edinburgh has plenty of stone-built ones, often need new Cat6 runs, and that installation labour is frequently a bigger cost driver than the cameras themselves. It is worth planning cabling for one or two spare positions even if you do not fit cameras there on day one.
Legally, any UK business running CCTV must register with the ICO and pay the data protection fee, currently from £52 a year for most small firms, display signage, and avoid pointing cameras at neighbouring property or public space beyond what is justified. Cameras covering staff areas need a clear purpose you could defend, and footage retention of around 30 days is the common standard unless you have a specific reason to keep more.
Rarely. Even a tiny unit benefits from two: one identifying faces at the entrance and one covering the till. A single camera almost always leaves either the doorway or the point of sale as a blind spot.
For most businesses, yes. External cameras deter break-ins and capture approaches, while internal cameras cover theft, disputes and incidents. Insurers increasingly expect both for retail and warehouse premises.
For a professionally installed IP system in the UK, a realistic range is roughly £150 to £400 per camera including cabling and setup, plus the recorder and storage. The final figure depends on cable runs, building construction and camera specification, which is why a site survey comes before any firm quote.
Send Scott the details and we'll get a realistic price back to you, usually the same working day.
Tell us about the job. A photo of the cabinet or a rough cable count is plenty to get a price started.